Maus and its sequel Maus II are among the most significant graphic novels to ever be published. They are semi-autobiographical tales about the author and his father, a Holocaust survivor. Art Spiegelman attempts to capture the psychic and physical horrors of the Holocaust in a way that transcends documentary evidence as well as mere fictionalization. Desensitization to the issues of mass murder has permeated popular culture, to the point where it becomes necessary to distance the horror entirely from the human experience and depict humans as animals. This way, Spiegelman acknowledges the problem of documentary evidence, the persistence of memory, and the subjectivity of personal experience. Maus is effective because it uses a unique medium, the graphic novel, to capture a uniquely macabre event in history. As the subtitle of Maus I suggests, the story is not just about Spiegelman's father. "My Father Bleeds History," the subtitle reads. The imagery of blood is unsurprising, but this subtitle also shows how the graphic novel has a frame narrative. Spiegelman wants to document his father's final memories of the Holocaust, but in order to do so, Art Spiegelman must contend with the tremendous gap that exists between him and his dad. As the first person narrator, Art admits, "I hadn't seen him in a long time -- we weren't that close," (11). Establishing the difficulties inherent in the father-son relationship, Maus therefore works on multiple human dimensions. This is not a...

evil, using the Nazis as the obvious embodiment of evil. Maus is also about human relationships and inter-generational conflict. It is about cross-cultural communications as an American son tries to relate with his father who remains stepped in Old World values. Furthermore, Maus is about the ways collective tragedies like genocide impact individuals. The Holocaust has an impact not only on the Jewish diaspora and the sociological dimensions of Jewish life and institutions. In addition to impacting Jewish social and political life, the Holocaust has had a bearing on family relationships. The ability for the father to come to terms with his own guilt and his feelings about his wife's suicide play a major role in the unfolding of the Maus plot. Traumatic stress has caused the father to shut down emotionally and close off his heart to his son. The fact that he has had two heart attacks -- exposed early in the novel -- underscores the way genocide strikes at the "heart" of personal, as well as collective, identities.
The subtitle of Maus II is "And Here My Troubles Began." Ironically, Art Spiegelman refers to the period from "Mauschwitz to the Catskills and Beyond" as being the "beginning" of his troubles. Thus, the author continues to flush out the theme of personal psychological and social impact of the Holocaust on Jewish individuals and families. Vladek, his father, is not the easiest character to like. He leaves a message…